I feel as if I should just be a town crier, yelling from the rooftops with a bell, “They have done it again, they’ve done it again!” I should also explain in my condescending way to anyone younger than three-hundred-years-old; that town criers are people who make official announcements on behalf of the royal court. The most recent use (I think), was the announcement of the names and times of the arrival of England’s royal babies. However, I’ll not say too much as Epic Games might steal their gimmick too.

Last November, around the Scrubs reunion (warning: strong language), actor Donald Faison and many fans were angry about something being featured in a small video game no one has heard about called Fortnite. This something was a dance Faison is known for doing several times throughout the run of Scrubs. The dance was (and still is to my knowledge) part of the Fortnite emotes, little dances players can perform at given times. However, it seems less than a year from the incident with Faison, Epic Games are back at taking dances without paying the person known for said dancing.

Why is this met with anger? Well, much like any creative endeavor, there are copyrights and other nonsense I don’t fully understand. As a writer, I know what my rights are when creating a piece for any reason, however, as a man with the agility of an elephant on a rollerskate I don’t understand the copyright for dancing. This is where I point to a musician referred to as Leo P, real name Leo Pellegrino. He is a musician known for playing a baritone saxophone. I know that isn’t the rockstar musical instrument you thought you’d be hearing about. However, Leo is part of a group called Too Many Zooz.

This group is one you may have seen in an advertisement, or somewhere online. In America, at least, they featured in a KFC ad, the Google Pixel 2 ad, and in Europe their song Warriors was part of the Eurovision song contest in 2018. If you live in New York City you may have seen them (and countless others) on the subway, their music video for Bedford is recorded at 3:33 AM at Union Square Station. It is this last one that’s important.

While this music video was part of a small ad by Google a year ago, it has been the base of evidence that Fortnite are at it once again. Part of what Leo P does in this video is copied into Fortnite as are other moves of other subway performances. Making this, at the very least, the second time Epic Games are known for taking what someone else has done, putting it into their game, and making money off of it.

Jokes aside about the size of the Fortnite audience, the game over this past week saw a total of over two million concurrent views on their World Cup event. An event where they paid a fifteen-year-old one million dollars for coming second, meanwhile, paying Kyle ‘Bugha‘ Giersdorf (sixteen-years-old) three million dollars, and a total prize pot of thirty million dollars. My point here is that while Epic Games is paying children, they could pay people for their artwork they are stealing.

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